To Ash and Blood
by DeathsLights
Summary: She presses down until the bone of her wrist can be felt. She is alive. She. Is. Alive. The sun sets, creeping down the horizon in progressions of diluted gold touched with purples and pinks. The clouds are wisps in the sky that drift in laze. The world is calm in its ruin. (Dimitri x Female Byleth)


_What I wanted to explore was, what if Dimitri and Byleth spent more days at the monastery? _

* * *

**To Ash and Blood**

Death lingers in Garreg Mach. The bodies from five years ago have turned into bones and nothing more. They lay scattered around like broken china. The monastery is skeletal ruins now. The stone walls have collapsed and nature is starting to wind its way in. Moss clings to walls and boulders. There are small white drooping flowers that bloom like drops of snow on grey; Dedue would have known their name. During the marches to and from battle, he would point to the wild flowers and name them. He, Annette, and Ashe would play a game where the two of them would pick a flower from the landscape and ask Dedue to name it. Mercedes would laugh and talk about the healing properties of some of them. Her memory is from somewhere in the present of her mind, but five years have passed. It's startling that time froze for her. Not for Fódlan, though. The people starve; their misery and grief plague the air and spread around them. The towns are nothing but settlements for the dying. The children do not smile. That is the truth of waged war, rulers do not concern themselves with the causalities of the commoners‒of the civilians that amount to nothing more than mere dust. Perhaps, she could have stopped it, trampled the wayward embers in the hearts of her students before they burned into fires that ate everything in their path and left nothing but ash. The birds do not sing at Garreg Mach. They too feel the presence of the reapers that have made the fortress theirs. As she walks into the heart of the silence, her boots echo in the stillness.

In the bordering town, they say that demons lurk in Garreg Mach. They are wrong. Only ghosts linger here.

* * *

The smell of iron and rotting flesh is heavy in the air. The smell of massacre‒the smell of childhood. She walks like a solitary specter through pools of coagulated blood, stepping over the bodies of imperial soldiers. She reaches the steps and stops. He is a time worn sculpture nested in the alcove, leaning on his lance. His hair is longer; it has lost the severeness of his previous cut. It is the same beautiful colour, though. The colour of a rising sun over in the winter morning. His face has matured and lost what softness once clung there. The students used to praise his boyishness. She remembers them once in the corridors before the House classrooms, watching Dimitri as he chatted with other students. She had been looking over progress sheets on a bench near by. The courtyard with the flow of life, the idle chatter, and traces of nature helped to lessen the sting of her father's death, so it wouldn't feel like her heart was dying all the time.

"He's like a prince from a fairy tale. He isn't like Edelgard who is beautiful in a cold way."

"I know what you mean. When you think of a prince, you think of Dimitri."

She had to turned to look at him. His polished gauntlets, glimmering as his cloak floated behind him. The smile on his face practiced to bring ease. To her the smoothness of his face just hid coldness better. Then again, all the three future leaders of Fódlan were cold in different ways and it was foolish to think they were ever genuine. Claude with words dripping with poisoned manipulation that tasted like sugar but dissolved into nothingness. Edelgard who wore her nobility like a shroud to set herself apart. Dimitri who used his chivalry to keep everyone at a distance. Now though, there is no gentleness to his face.

He lifts his head, face blood stained. There are purple bruises from sleep deprivation underneath his eye.

"I should have known that one day you would be haunting me as well." The words are weighted and sink down into the stone around them.

* * *

Dimitri will not leave the alcove, nor will he accept that she is a living person. She settles herself on the ledge of the staircase and watches. She will need to secure food and water for them. The pond by the greenhouse still had fish in it. She had seen the scales, glittering like the scattered rays of rainbows in the water. The greenhouse whose walls were like crystal once are now coated with layers of dust. Dried leaves and flowers petals scattered across the ground in petrification. Wooden stems from flowering bushes and the hollow trees that used to produce Morfis plums, Noa fruits, and peach currants. Sylvain would sneak in and pluck flowers for the girls who he was seducing that day. She had caught because she had been sitting on the bridge to the pond, dipping her bare feet into the water. He had held a finger to his lip for silence, winked before heading off to his date. The soil is so dry that it has cemented, only the spots where the roof tiles have collapsed had gotten water, leaving one fruiting Morfis Plum tree, a patch of verona, and a bush or two of Albinean berries. Everything else had rotted back into the earth. The flora of Duscur had withered without the care of Dedue. It is another part of Duscur lost in war. What else has become another weight on the scales of war? What is surprising is that the dorms have been left as they were fives years ago only covered with thick layers of dust. Then again no one wants to rob graves on church grounds. The graves of priests, nuns, and children are hard to desecrate. The bodies on battlefields are open to pillaging. Survival does not come easy of those who are common born. Her father does not hide the brutality of mercenary life as he stands among carnage, wiping bits of flesh and bone from his body among the decay, he tells her that they are hired death and mercy is not an option. His sword coated with blood that drips and stains the earth. Mercy will end with a blade splitting your ribcage open. He is right.

"They never cease their wails and pleas, so why do you not talk?"

"It's not like I did much before. I can if you like, what do you want to talk about?"

He ignores her and goes back to staring ahead into a world she doesn't see. Byleth leans her weight onto her palms. The stone is cold as water and smooth. She presses down until the bone of her wrist can be felt. She is alive. She. Is. Alive. The sun sets, creeping down the horizon in progressions of diluted gold touched with purples and pinks. The clouds are wisps in the sky that drift in laze. The world is calm in its ruin.

* * *

Once the moon has risen, she conjures a ball of fire for light and lets it float between them. The bodies behind them are hidden in the darkness and everything is cast in the soft orange glow of the flame. "What has happened in the five years?"

Dimitri stirs a little; his one eye focuses on her. Seconds turn to minutes and nothing comes. She tries again, "there is a gem that is the same colour of your eye. It comes from neighbouring territory; I don't remember the name of." Before the ball, Annette and Mercedes had forced Ingrid and her to go into the town below to buy makeup and jewellery. Crowds of students from the Academy trickled around the marketplace where stalls created tunnels winding through the streets. She wandered through not looking at anything as necklaces, earrings, and bracelets shone under the sun. She passed by Annette holding a lipstick up to Ingrid's face, smiling. Saw Mercedes at the sweets shop; her face smudged with red sticky sugar syrup off to the side. She had stopped at a stall by the fountain. A necklace with a raindrop jewel on a silver chain stood surrounded by the greens of jade and emerald, the reds of opal and ruby, and the pinks of kunzite and morganite. She had picked up the necklace, held it up to the light. "That's a rare gem, madam. It's not found in Fódlan, but I can give to for a deal." It is ice that starts to spreads during the red wolf moon.

"Aquamarine like the ice that blooms during the red wolf moon."

Dimitri says nothing.

Silence falls back like a curtain between them. She lies down on the ledge, head resting on her shoulder, her face turned to Dimitri. The ball of fire burns like a small sun between them. It is a sentry that watches them as it keeps the darkness away. "The cats and dogs are gone," she says.

"Nothing but the dead live here and if you have come here looking for life then go back because it does not settle and thrive among damnation." His voice is steady, but the words are not for her.

"Then why do you stay?"

He laughs and madness echoes back. "As if you do not know, why else have you come before me?"

She frowns. "Why do you think I'm here?"

His laughter bubbles and bounces off the bricks. He taps his head against the wall and looks at her. His lance left by his feet. "You come for the same reason as those behind you from Duscur, who ask for the meaning of their blood‒who demand remuneration in the heads of those guilty for their execution. I stay to be their executioner. Tell me, Professor, what is that you plague me for?"

Byleth shakes her head. "Nothing. I ask for nothing."

He smiles. "No one asks for nothing. In time, you too will join the voices of the dead to torment me."

"I won't."

He turns his attention to the sky to watch the fall of stars and the blinking of galaxies, dismissing her. Stalled time has begun to move, but she is not the only one that needs to learn to match its step.

* * *

They do not sleep.

She spends the night with her face turned upwards to the heavens. If she is awake then this is real. She watches the slow transition of the moon drifting to slumber as the sun starts to peak. The sun reaches out to stroke her face with its ray, a blooming warmth at dawn. Nothing sounds; it stirs unease in her. The sun disappears behind thick, grey clouds that bring the company of cold wind. She closes her eyes, breathes in the breeze, and lets it chill her. There are things that must be done. "I will be back soon." She does not wait for an answer.

* * *

Felix tells her once, as they are sitting on the steps that lead into the inner arena of the training grounds, cooling off after a sparring season. He rolls his shoulder, bracing his hand against his shoulder blade. There is slash across the fabric of his forearm. She stopped before she had drawn blood. Control is a precarious tether that must be gripped so tight in your hand that imprints itself into your skin, down through muscle, until it is touching bone. His sword will need to be repaired; there is a chip on the edge of the blade. She wonders where the fragment of silver has gone. "The Boar Prince's mask is starting to slip, Professor. You've noticed it." She has, which is why she keeps Dimitri at Garreg Mach, so she is always close. It is why she will let no one but herself spar with him. She'd made a mistake, once. Had gone to meet Professor Hanneman for more tests, her change had spurred the scientist in Hanneman to more eccentric behaviours. She'd rather he not stand by her room, waiting for her to wake to ask for more tests. It was better to voluntarily provide them. Ashe had come running, his pale face red, panting. "Tra-Training grounds‒Dimitri‒Ingrid." She doesn't wait. She's already running before Ashe can finish talking. She clutches the sword on her hip and pushes the heavy wooden doors open. Ingrid raises her lance like a bar above her head. Her hands are leaving prints of blood that drip down onto the floor. Dimitri bares down against the brace. Ingrid's arms shake and her knees aren't steady. Metal creaks. Her weapon won't hold. It's that look again in his eyes. Madness. Pleasure. Bloodthirst. She draws her sword, digs her boots into the sand, and runs forward. Dimitri turns his head, draws back, and readies his lance. "Ingrid." She doesn't let her attention stray. "I want you to go." "Professor, I can't leave you." "Go. Now." Their weapons meet and grate against each other. Footsteps slow at first, then they speed up in retreat. Strength against strength with Dimitri will never work. Not now. He's broken an entire armoury's worth of weapons by doing simple sword practices. In this state, he relies on brutality not logic. She conjures wind. Creates a tornado, feeds it until it is strong enough to consume all the sand. She flings it into him. The pressure against her sword eases. The vortex spins and spins. Granules of sand hurtle against her skin like bee stings. She will have cuts across her skin, thin and straight. She walks forward into the eye. The Blue Lions find them once it is all over. Dimitri is on the floor next to her. Felix's anger is still, coiled tight, and trapped inside of his body. Sylvain's anger is unrestrained, destructive. "Dedue take Dimitri back to his room. We will discuss this another time." Before Sylvain can start, she continues, "Sylvain, go take care of Ingrid. We will talk soon." He lets out a breath and leaves in a succession of weighted steps. Dedue kneels down; Ashe helps to place Dimitri on Dedue's back. They leave. Felix stays. His quietness, demanding. She knows. She knows. Felix blinks now, eyes feline, searching and knowing the answer. "What will you do, Professor when that mask he wears shatters and what's behind it finally comes to be his reality?"

She kneels down in front of him. Sets down a bowl of fruit, a bowl of water, and places a cloth in her lap. As a child, she'd seen them on outskirts of Remire village. They lingered on the boundary line between the village and forest, watching the villagers. They were starved sentries, built without layers of muscles and fat between the skin and skeleton. She tried to feed them once, stolen a pike from the kitchen, wrapped it up in cloth, and hidden it under shirt. It is wet against her stomach as she walks through the village. She stopped on the edge of the line by the blacksmith's shop. The kilt heating the air around the shop; the smell of smithing metals copper, iron, silver, and gold metallic in the air. The pounding of the blacksmith's hammer is the tempo beat of war. The path worn down to a raw dirt road. The dogs had growled, low and rumbling like distant thunder over the Oghma Mountains. Their fangs coated in saliva, gleam like fragments of marble. Her foot touches the edge of the forest. She remembers the warmth of her father's chest as he pulled her back, and the arch of his sword in front of her. The dogs run back.

"What were you doing?" She's made him mad. His shoulders are tense. He's frowning. "Byleth, what were you doing?" Flies buzz around the discarded fish. Its eye is like a clouded marble. "Byleth, when I'm talking to you, you look at me." She meets his gaze. Seconds become minutes before her father sighs. He picks her up again; she rubs her nose against his shirt. He smells of the earth, thick and heady. When he comes back from battles, he smells of blood and fire. She rests her head on his shoulder. "You smell like fish, kid." She feels like vibrations of his murmur down into her stomach. "I hid the fish under my shirt," she says. "Well then, you're going to have a bath tonight then." Her father warms three buckets of water on the flame and dumps them into the tub. She rises her arms, so her father can help her take off her shirt. Her trousers are discarded to the side. Her father settles down the floor, wets a washcloth, and rubs it over a bar of soap. She pulls her knees to her chest. The water sloshes over the rim onto the wooden floor. "They were hungry," she whispers. "You can't feed every hungry thing. Close your eyes." He uses a small cup to scoop water onto to her head. He runs the cloth over her face. "Why not?" He dips the cloth back into the water before rubbing soap against it. "Because not everyone or thing can be helped, Byleth. Those dogs out there are feral; they've forgotten their humanity, and once things have forgotten their humanity; they don't remember them again. Those are wolves now that hear the call of something beastly in them." She submerges the cloth into the bowl and wrings it out. She wonders what her father would say about feral princes. She brings it to his face. Dimitri grabs her hand; his fingers curling around her wrist.

"We need to wipe off the blood."

"Do as you please," he drops her hand and closes his eye. She sweeps the cloth, slow and gentle across his skin. He opens his eye when her hand lingers.

"I'm sorry I left."

"I would have ended up here regardless of your presence. I chose my path long before you." He would have. The truth is like the sun‒inextinguishable and scorching. He has lain the stones of his destruction starting at the genocide of Duscur and continued to lay the foundations of his ruin.

Water from the cloth slides down her hand and hangs on the bend of her wrist. "And you have lain waste to everything else." She brushes the strands out of his eye and tucks them behind his ear. The side of her thumb and index finger caress his cheek. "And felt nothing."

The drop of water swells, becomes thick with moisture and falls between them.

"And why should the world not burn, Professor? Like mine did."

"What will be left among ashes, Dimitri?" Sorrow clings to her words like tar.

He grabs the back of her neck. "Retribution. Everything that was stolen from me, my father, my mother, my friends, my people‒", she finds herself staring into the surface of a frozen lake. His hand moves to her cheek. "You. Everything will be measured in blood and ash and it will be quiet." He drops his hand and he looks behind her. The rain is sudden and hard on the land. Her hair sticks to her face. Everything floods in seconds, the water pools around them. He tilts his face to the sky and lets the water cleanse him. "They will finally let me rest."

* * *

She sits down next to him and holds up her cloak over their heads. They watch the falling drops plunge into the collecting water in front of them. During their mercenary days, when she was younger, her father would settle down in the forest, sometimes under a tree or on a fall log, and pull her onto his lap. They would watch the rain. She'd burrow her head into his shoulder, lulled and sheltered, to sleep. Time is not forgiving in that way; she'd grown too old for that. So, she had started to brew tea for them on rainy days. At the monastery, she would make tea for the days her father was there and bring it up to his quarters. He'd have a plate of tea cookies and scones from the lower markets ready for them. They don't talk; they would sit by the window, watching the drenched world. She leans closer to Dimitri, feels the solidness of him, and breathes. "We need to go, Dimitri. The rain will get worse. What are you ill and weak?" The stagnate lake in front of them will come to swallow them. It laps at their feet. She gets up, picking up the basket of fruit. She steps into the water and waits. Nothing gives way‒nothing comes from its depths. She lets out a slow exhale and continues. Behind her, she hears heavy weight of Dimitri's lance scrape against the ground before he follows.

* * *

He waits at the threshold of her personal quarter's as she grabs a towel. He follows her moments. She stands on the tips of her toes to dry to his hair. "Go bathe while I wash and dry your clothes. I've gotten some clothes from town you can wear until then." She lets the towel slip down to his neck and hands him the sleepwear. It is far from what kings' wear, the material is a soft pale unadorned cotton, but in times of war whatever they can get is enough. Even though she has cleaned the room, the smell of dust and stale air will not leave. She had gone to the town below to buy some linens, clothes, medicine, and a bit of food. Ruin spreads like disease, the marketplace is broken stalls, shattered glass, and rotting wood. The cobblestone is slimy in the rain and moss has started to grow around the edges of the pathway. There are scorch marks singed on the side of buildings. Children do not play in the streets. She stops by the fountain. The water does not flow and has turned brown. Algae grows on top like a sheet and has started to crawl up the sides. The water once was clear filled with rocks coloured of jewels. Sparrows would come to drink from the fountain. She used to sit on the edge of it to enjoy the sun and the sounds of the marketplace from the merchants calling their wares, to the children's games of tag, and the singing of nursery rhymes. She finds the few shops that are open in the centre of town filled with meager scavenges of whatever can be obtained. Most of the merchants have left and those who remain are those without choice. She stops by the fountain on her way back. She can see bits of herself where the algae has not spread. She is a faint, flickering ghost in the water's reflection. The water is not sure if she is really there. Everything is grimmer now, nightmare shaded, and distorted. Time has withered things here people, buildings, and spirits. What has it done to her?

* * *

Dimitri's clothes hang outside on the railing to dry. It is unusual to see him not outfitted for war. In the sleep clothes, he looks like a patient for the sick ward. "Take off your shirt. I know you're injured." He takes of his shirt. Five years ago, his frame was smaller, thinner now he is taller more muscled. He towers now. She starts to smooth the healing balm down his arm on the wounds that are starting to knit. His skin is a mapped with scars some are thin tally marks, starting to fade, others are deep into his skin, some are slashes, and some are rounded marks from arrowheads. She pats down the balm along his collarbone, tracing the cut there. "Turn around." His back is more scars than skin. There is one that extends from right shoulder down to the left of third ribcage. Her fingers hover over it. She works on the shallow wounds of his back. Once done, she hands him a bowl of soup to eat and sets down a mug of tea on the floor in front of the bed. When he does not eat, she speaks, "You will be of no use starved even if your strength is unnatural, you need to eat." He eats. She sits down on her desk chair. Outside, the rain continues. The clouds are dark and cotton thick on the skyline. She doesn't feel hunger, which is unsettling. She had always been preoccupied with life in Garreg Mach, her duties, and obligations that she hadn't‒

She swallows. She hadn't let herself notice that hunger did not come. She still ate with others because they had wanted her company but alone hunger would not come alone. Metal clatters to the ground, the mug tumbles towards her, she picks it up, and places it on the desk. Dimitri's hand hangs between his thighs, trying to reach something on the floor. He struggles to stay up right, falling forward in slow increments. She guides him to the bed. His fingers curl into the back of her cloak.

"Don't let me sleep."

His hair presses into the skin of cheek.

"You must, Dimitri."

"You do not know what waits for me there, Professor. Do not let me sleep." His breath smells of camomile. She lowers herself down until Dimitri's back touches the bed. Her chest touches his. She braces her arms on the sides of his head. He will not let go.

"When you wake, I will be here waiting. Whatever lingers in dreams will not hold there, go to sleep." He tries to fight it, but the spell of slumber will win. She has made sure of it. "You need to rest, Dimitri. All will be okay." It takes a few minutes and then his eye shuts. She gets up, picking the discarded bowl of soup as she goes. She'd put sleeping herbs in the broth and the tea. She sits down by the head of the bed. Her heads tilts to where Sothis would hover in her room. She always looked to be in a dream, lethargic in her movements, eyes hooded. "Something about this place is familiar," she said once, watching Byleth mark reports on battle tactics suited for snowy mountain terrain. Sothis stared out into the courtyard. "Something old and forgotten, Byleth. It's like the Red Canyon; it calls for me." She frowns. "Nothing comes though. The harder I try the further it slips and it leaves me so tired. I want to sleep, but I have slept for so long that it frightens me to close my eyes. I feel the passing of time like wind on my skin, where I feel it, but it does not leave its trace. I see things as they once were, how they change, yet I know not of why I know things." Sothis looks at her. Sadness is eons old, in it she is lost.

"You are here now. You are part of time through me and we will see and experience everything. You'll watch the change of seasons, the growth of life, taste foods, feel rain and snow here with me. Time will not leave this time; I promise you that."

Sothis smiles, floating up higher. "Then I want to eat sweet bun trio with peach sorbet." She nods. Brain freeze will be interesting.

Now she understands that fear of time passing and you not going with it. She holds her wrist into the sliver of moonlight. It's starting to purple like blooming lavender. She rests her head on her knees. She is here. Dimitri breathes. Her heart beats. She is here. She does not sleep.

* * *

Dimitri sleeps for two days before he wakes. The second day, she spends walking around the monastery. Everything is covered in cobwebs and dust; the touch of forgotten things. She leaves footprints in the carpet of dust all around the floor. The air inside is heavy with staleness and disuse. The dining hall in stasis, waiting for a meal that will never come where the cutlery, plates, and cups are setup on red faded cloth in front of vases filled with withered stems. The courtyard to the classrooms is filled with overgrown grass. Ivy and moss that climbs walls and pillars. Parts the wall have crumbled and stone lays scattered. She sits down on a bench. The flowers sway. There are no sounds. No murmuring. No footsteps. No songs of birds. There is nothing. Nothing, but the eeriness of void of life. She would sit here and talk with Claude some days.

"I'm sure you regret choosing the Blue Lion House, Professor. How would you like to change houses? We would do well together." He'd smile practiced in its warmth, but his eyes hold nothing. A lot of people fall into the traps he lays. He is a brilliant tactician and will lead the Leicester Alliance to greatness, but what of him? The people talk of the three heirs and of their futures as rulers. No one considers what will become of them in their steps of ascent. She shares this with Sothis. There are times that something old and ancient awakens in Sothis. She will stop talking, her eyes will glow like melted jade, and she will not see her. Her face will not be child-like, something heavier will sit there, something forgotten by man. "It is not their path that you should fear. It is the ascent itself. Even though all of their fates are one, and will converge, it is only you who will decide, which is the truth," Sothis turns her head to Byleth, "which destiny will be history." It is only now that she understands the prophecy, but then when she is given her unknown fate, she can do nothing but guide her students and hope that it is enough for them. So, she tells him, "Perhaps, the day you learn to smile I will consider it." Claude's smile dropped. "Words can hide many things, but we are human and betray ourselves. You will be a wonderful leader, but if you continue to alienate yourself as you do, there will be no one to stand beside that you will trust."

Claude leans his head on her shoulder. He smells of salt and brine. His hair is soft. "Ah, I regret not trying harder to sway you from Dimitri. Even when times passes, I will always regret it."

* * *

She sleeps on the second day. She is grateful that sleep comes. That she is still human in that. When she wakes, Dimitri is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her. There is clarity in his eyes now. The madness is there as well. "You drugged me." She straightens her spine; the wooden chair had not been the best place to sleep.

"Because you needed to sleep."

He's off the bed and in front of her in the span of her blink. He steadies himself on the arms of her chair and leans down. His body expels heat. "What I should be doing is hunting Edelgard and all her dogs."

She leans back in her chair. "You wouldn't even make it past her foot soldiers in the state you are." She frowns and places her hand over his. "You have a fever." She reaches up to touch his forehead. "You need to rest. Once you are better, do as you please."

"Rest," he laughs. "Rest does not come to those cursed to carry the burdens of the dead. They want justice and I must give it."

"This revenge you seek does not help." It never will. She drops her hand into her lap. "It will not ease your pain or the regrets. No matter how unjust what was stolen from you was. It will not bring solace, Dimitri. What you seek will wither you heart nothing more will come of it."

Dimitri comes closer. "Then let it."

"What of your people?" She asks.

"I do this for my people."

She does not look away. "No, you do this for the dead who have no hold on this world and you ignore your duties to the people of Faerghus. You give your selfishness the name of your people."

The armrests splinter. "How dare you speak before me in such insolence," the words gain volume as he speaks, rising like stairs.

"When you act like a king, I will address you as such. If you continue to act like a fool, I will treat you as such. Either you rest of your own will or I will force you, decide what you prefer."

"Oh?" Dimitri leans closer. She can feel his breath on her lips. "How will you do that?"

She stands up and when he draws back, she kicks out and connects with his knee. Dimitri collapses. "When you are better, you'll deflect. Until then, rest. I will make something for the fever." She offers him her hand. He ignores it. So, she grips his elbow and pulls him, guiding him to the bed. She grabs the blanket, pulls it over his shoulders, and wraps it around him. "Rest." She leaves and leans against the wall, waiting. Seconds tiptoe into minutes. Ivy winds around the pillars. Moss grows between the gaps in the cobblestone like a long-forgotten rune. The courtyard is empty. Sometimes, in the mornings, she'd sit on the stairs by her room with Sothis. They watch the sun spread its light. Once, Sothis had reached out to touch the sunlight. Her hand hovered for a minute before she withdrew it. She stared at her hand, frowning before getting up, and returning to their quarters. Sothis never tells her what happened, but when they sit on the stairs after that Sothis is quiet and her gaze, longing. When nothing happens, she leaves to make food for Dimitri.

* * *

The bowl is hot in her hands. The mug of tea steams ginger mist into the air. She hands the bowl to Dimitri and puts the mug next to his feet. He glances down at the soup and back up at her. She sits down on her knees; the stone is cold ice. She takes a sip of the tea. The ginger burns her throat. She puts her hands on top of Dimitri's and tilts the bowl into her mouth. The soup is more water than anything. It tastes earthy‒a bit medicinal. When nothing happens, Dimitri drinks the soup. She hands him the tea. She sits down beside him on the floor, bracing her back on the mattress. She feels a gentle tug. Dimitri holds a strand of her hair in his fingers. "I preferred the colour of your hair before. Faerghus is a kingdom of ice; things do not thrive there. Only things used to the cold like pine and evergreen trees. Your hair was the colour of those." He strokes the strand. "I miss them," he whispers.

"Did you not go back after…" She doesn't continue.

He laughs. "After our humiliation here? Yes, I did. I went back to wage a war." His fingers stop. "I don't remember the trees. I don't remember what Faerghus was like. It wasn't important."

"Home for me was always my father," she says. She pulls her knees to her chest. "We never stayed long enough at any place. I had never realized we were running. It never mattered." She rests her cheek on her knees, so she can look at Dimitri. She smiles. But then, he died. And she was lost.

"The people we love do not leave so easily." Yes, they both know that. Either they haunt you, or they linger like warm summer wind.

"Did ever wish they would?"

Dimitri says nothing for a few minutes. "Whatever I wish matters not, it has never mattered before the dead." Dimitri lies down. "I'm tired of talk." She grabs the blanket that she had used last night and drapes it over him. She checks the temperature of his forehead. Ah, he's burning. No wonder he had been so talkative. She closes the windows and the door. She lights the candles on her desk that she had found in the library. Her chair is useless. So, she wedges herself between the wall and her desk with a book on knightly tales that Ashe and Ingrid had recommended years ago.

_There was once a land of ice and snow. _

_A land so cold, where the people who lived did not thrive. _

_They survived like Lichens on rocks, stubborn and resilient._

_Children learn of war before they learn of writing._

_They carry swords, lances, bows, and axes in the place of dolls and child's joy._

_Such is the place that gives rise to the Holy Knights. _

_Such is the place know as Faerghus._

_The kingdom of Ice._

She wakes not knowing. It is sudden. It is not the climbing awareness that comes when waking from sleep. Something has woken her. Her hand is already on her dagger. The book lies on the floor; its pages creasing and wrinkling. Nothing stirs. She picks it up, smooths out the pages before putting next to her. Then it comes, a small sound. Wounded. She gets up. "Dimitri?"

He does not wake. His heat is like a dying fire when she checks his temperature, she frowns. His temperature has risen. She lays a wet cloth on his forehead. His breathing is shallow. The candles have all melted, becoming hard puddles of wax. Some of the wax has slid down the edge and froze in drops that hang like stalagmites. She picks at the wax that has molded to her skin. She hadn't felt the burn of it. Most people do not feel their wounds until they fester or until they notice the scars. Dedue and Felix are allies in battle, but outside of it there is a tension between them. She walks by one night after consoling Manuela on another failed relationship. She's walking through the stables to get to her quarters. The air smells of hay and manure. She hears Felix's voice, hard and grating.

"You hound on his steps and follow him like he is your master. But will you do with the carnage he'll leave?"

She stops walking. The pegasus in the stall tilts its head and comes to the gate.

Dedue's voice is even. She smooths a hand down the nose of the horse. "You take too much allowance in the freedom his highness has given you. Do not forget Lord Fraldarius that he will be your king one day, so learn to control your tongue before that day comes. If you will excuse me, I have matters to attend to in the dining hall."

The sound of steps echoes. "Are you going to keep hiding Professor?" Felix leans against the edge of the wall, watching her.

The peagasus snorts a stream of air against her arm. "I seem to walk into a lot of conversations around the monastery. Everyone seems to want to have conversations in the oddest corners. I did not mean to intrude. I am sorry."

He says nothing. The paegasus stretches its wings.

"You are quite lucky, Professor."

"In what?"

"You have lived without the hands of the Church, the Kingdom, the Empire, or the Alliance around your throat." Her hand stops. "All of us here are bound and our paths will be decided by them, but not yours. Your fate is your own." She looks over her shoulder. Felix's face is hidden by the shadows. "You are blessed to never know the cage of servitude."

She smooths the wet strands away from Dimitri's flushed face. She chose Dimitri years ago despite seeing the darkness. Despite Sothis's warnings. She had sat on the ledge of the bridge that connected the church to the rest of the monastery one night, watching the stars blink. Sothis standing on the water below her, looking at the fish that swan in the depths. Sothis is like a star, shedding light over the darkness. She glows. Byleth sees the fish that look like serpents as they sway. Their bodies become larger, growing, their scales are dipped in melted jewels. There are always moments when the world feels old-eons old to her. Things that have been long forgotten seem to come into existence and then fade before Sothis. Sometimes, phoenixes soar, their feathers burning, and dragons breath acrid fire before her. Now serpents rise from the water around them, forked tongues tasting the air. One bends its giant head toward her, the slash of its iris, expanding and then shrinking as it focuses on her. She blinks and everything disappears. They are things that once were. Sothis stops and tilts her head up. Byleth turns to find Dimitri, smiling at her. He comes to stand beside her, arms resting on the ledge. She leans against him as they watch falling stars drop from the sky. When she looks down, Sothis is gone.

* * *

Sothis is in their room when she returns, sitting on the bed and it is odd to see her there. Her eyes glow in the darkness coloured in jade.

"You are quiet. Why?"

Sothis says nothing. She starts to take off her cloak, draping it over the chair. She starts to unclasp her chest armour when Sothis speaks.

"If he burns the world," she turns confused, "and blood falls like rain to this earth because of him, what will you do?" She wants to ask who Sothis is talking about, but she is not stupid. Sothis's eyes bore into her. "We saw it when we meet him for the first time, how darkness eats at his heart. You felt the depth of it in his soul when we looked at him." She blinks. Sothis is in front of her, she reaches out a hand, and lays it against Byleth's cheek. "What will you do, Byleth, when that darkness consumes him and leaves nothing behind?" Her throat tightens. Sothis demands an answer in her silence, but nothing comes out. She has no answer.

* * *

He does not wake nor does his fever break on the second day. She watches the dust dance in the streaming sunlight that comes into the room in shards. The water in the basin ripples beside her. If her eyes fall closed for too long, the silence becomes unnerving. The world falls away; she is the only thing that is left. She rests her shoulder against the bed, stretches her fingers, so they brush against Dimitri's. If there is something to hold on to, there will be no fear of sleep. No fear of the oblivion that she will slip into because Dimitri will be here. As her eyes start to close, she curls her fingers around Dimitri's index finger, burying her face into the mattress.

* * *

When she wakes, it is to the feeling of fingers threading through hers, pressing into the gaps between her knuckles. She grips back.

"You're awake." Dimitri's voice is soft, a bit scratchy from the fever. He's on his side. His eye trace over her face. His skin has lost the grey tone of illness. The bags under his eyes have healed. They gaze at each other. When her father and her were still mercenaries that roamed Fódlan, they'd go deep past the heart of Faerghus where the snow reached their knees and nothing but small scatters of pine trees dotted the horizon like burnt matchsticks. There were craters of thawing arctic ice that broke the landscape. The pools are a pale soft blue. She kneels down at the edge of the ice and reaches to touch the water. It is so cold that it hurts and numbs her fingers. His eye is like those pools.

She smiles into the flesh of her forearm as sunlight spills into from the rising dawn.

* * *

Dimitri goes to wash off the traces of sickness. She clips on her cloak. There are things she must stop ignoring.

She pulls out the weeds around her father's grave. It is her mother's as well. She has to remember that. She had known her mother only in the way that her birth without her would not be possible. She noticed as a child that most people had both mothers and fathers, so she had asked once who her mother was. Her father stops sharpening his sword. He looks at her in the way that people try to trace the similarities of blood onto faces. She doesn't look like her father in any way. She's spent hours in front of mirrors, trying to find out what parts of him she is made from. She even tries in the distorted reflection of water, hoping somewhere in the unclarity she will find him in her features. There days where her father will gaze into the distance absent from their present, listening to the call of something that only reaches his ears. She grabs a hold of his hand on those days afraid that he will fade into the aether.

Her father swallows. The rag hangs in his hand. Ah, she has made a mistake. The sorrow withers him before her eyes. She should not have asked anything. After that day, she never asks again.

* * *

She hears a distant rustling then a warmth settles over her shoulders. The memories draw back into the corners of her mind where she lets the things that ache lie. The grass is wet and so is she. Droplets slide down the strands of her hair onto her shoulders. Dimitri holds up his cloak above their heads. She blinks the water out of her eyes and goes back to staring at the grave.

"My father was a warrior before all else. He struggled with being a father and with this grief that I saw but didn't understand until we came." All her father is now is name etched on cement. A body turned to bone. "We were each others worlds." Dimitri listens. His breath is strokes the her neck. "They were small worlds, yes, but they were all I knew, and I was happy in them." She swallows against the hard pit of stone stuck in her throat. "Then I came here, I knew why that wasn't enough. Why my father felt such guilt. Why there were days he'd hug me so tight and bury his head into my hair and leave it wet. But that didn't mean I would be okay without him." Her tears sear her cold skin as they travel down her face.

Dimitri leans closer. His chest braces against her back. She lets herself lean against it. The rain falls in a steady beat, dying the gravestone into the grey of storm clouds. A small sparrow settles among one of the mock orange bushes scattered around the cemetery and offers a solitary note.

* * *

She sits on the stairs in front of her room. She still has his cloak over her shoulders; the fur is soft. She burrows her face into the collar. Dimitri comes to sit next to her, offering a mug of tea. She cups it between her hands and lets it warm her cold fingers. Rain clings to the leaves of trees like crystals. A black cat walks along the wall of the fortress. She closes her eyes. The downpour has left a cold mist in the air. The cup in her hands is starting to burn the tips of her fingers now. Next to her Dimitri whole and solid. She smiles. She is back. This is real.

* * *

She wakes, sudden and alert. Something has woken her. It is dark in the room, so she cannot see the outline of things. There is only the touch of night that has dyed everything in black. There is urgency rising. _Go_. The voice whispers by her ear. _Go, for he will fall without you. _She runs as the pebbles prick her feet and the cold wind hits her bare shoulders. Where? Where? A breeze strokes her cheek. _The Church_. She forces herself to go faster.

* * *

She finds Dimitri in the ruins of the church before fallen idols, on his knees. The statue of Seiros has lost half her face and moss clings to her in tufts. There is fresh blood across her stone cheek. The roof has collapsed, leaving a tear that reveals the night sky before them like a fragment of star map. The light of the moon spills in from the crater. "They will not leave me be. No one else hears their cries, their anguish, or their torment. When I sleep, I see my father dragged through the streets of Duscur and then slaughtered." She kneels in front of Dimitri, leans her forehead against his, and holds his face between her hands.

"What do you want?"

Dimitri fingers have been scraped raw. "For it to be silent," he pleads. "I want to rest." He grasps her wrists. "I want this to be over." His blood stains her arms. She feels his tears against her thumb.

Felix is wrong. She understands the weight of servitude. The way it crushes. The way it tightens its hold until you suffocate. Her every decision will shape Fódlan. Her smallest movements will alter its history. She knows. She knows; she is Fódlan as much as Fódlan is her.

"What do you want?"

The madness is returning, claiming once more. His fingers tighten binding her. She feels the bone shift underneath her skin. "I want Edelgard's head."

"Then I will bring it."

She draws Dimitri against her and holds him. She presses her face into his neck. She will wage this war for him.

_What have you done?_

Her tears wet his armour. Dimitri pulls her closer until the metal hurts her, folding her against himself. The world will be razed to ash and blood.

* * *

_Please do comment if you liked the story! :)_


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